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I stopped using Facebook last November. It's been a fantastic experience. Whether you realize it or not, FB changes your emotional health. FB used to make me

• mtgx 14y ago
  I think this whole "social networking" thing will start to fade soon, as people increasingly realize that it's not "cool" anymore, and that they don't really need it, other perhaps than checking their accounts twice a year. So this whole discussion about whether Google+ or other company can beat Facebook or not might be irrelevant, if the whole social networking "industry" collapses in the next 5 years.
  • gorydetails 14y ago
    I agree. This whole "Internet" thing is highly overrated. Also, "electricity" and "clean water."
    • eostyx 14y ago
      You ass. You can't compare things that are essential to a functioning economy to be compared to annoying background noise like '"social" networking'. It more closely related to TV and online media. Both of which are incredibly draining and mind numbing. Try going without TV for a year and take up a productive/creative hobby.
      • gorydetails 14y ago
        Try telling Syrian activists that social networking is "noise." The ability to freely share information is highly underrated in places where information may be freely shared. Thanks for the tip.
  • graue 14y ago
    Facebook has over 900 million monthly active users (google it and you can easily confirm this from multiple sources). It may not be "cool", but the time when you could proclaim it a fad has long since passed. That's like saying TV's not cool.
    • deleted 14y ago
      [deleted]
• adrianhoward 14y ago
  Not attempting to dissuade anybody from dumping Facebook - but to present another option. I use FB once a day. I treat it like a newspaper. A once-a-day update on friends lives that I poke at over a coffee, then throw away until the next day. I find this a nice balance between having a "real" life, and maintaining some connections with folk that I otherwise wouldn't see socially very often. Works for me. YMMV.
  • wmboy 14y ago
    Yeah, I'm thinking of deleting the FB app on my phone. It's just a temptation to constantly check what's happening and stop being present with whoever I'm around.
    • gurkendoktor 14y ago
      Do it! I've never looked back. Then, ask yourself if $amount of money per month is still worth it for a 3G contract. This one really depends on your work and your environment (is there WiFi in walking range if you need it?). But it saved me time and money so far.
  • theorique 14y ago
    This is a very rational way to use Facebook. Make yourself the master of it, and get value from the tool on your own terms. Once a day (e.g. 15 minutes) use probably gives a person 80% of the utility or value of 20x a day (e.g. 2 hours) usage. There is relatively little benefit from all those "extra visits", since almost nothing on Facebook is urgent, actionable, or going to cost money if not attended to immediately. (A great example of the 80-20 rule in action, btw.)
  • zem 14y ago
    yeah, this is how i try use it too. the problem is that at the end of the day it's really hard to sift through the stream of fwd:fwd:fwd junk to get to the real updates you care about, because it all lands on you at once, so most days i find myself avoiding it, and in practice i end up checking a few people's walls individually once a week or so. i wish facebook provided a precise way for me to set up filter rules (e.g. filter out anything that has been reshared without comment); i don't really trust their automatic signal-versus-noise balancing algorithms to craft me a stream.
• GuiA 14y ago
  It's funny that people just can't do things in a balanced way, it always has to be all or nothing. In the past 5 years, I've lived in 5 different cities across 3 different countries. My network of friends is very widespread geographically, and I love Facebook for being able to see pictures of my friends or read their random thoughts and what they're up to in life without hassles of long distance calls, scheduling skype sessions, time difference, etc. We often have lengthy conversations through comment threads or Facebook chat. In a way, I use Facebook a bit like a private message board with my close friends and family (this isn't hard for me as I was a big user of message boards as a teenager, so this habit of sharing life with people in a digitally written form is ingrained into me). But I also go out to dinner with the friends in my current city, hang out and go out with them, text/call them to hear about how that job interview went, etc. You can use Facebook in an "socially healthy" way, and not spend hours reading it passively. (I also use Facebook in a semi-unusual way: I have 2 different accounts; one that has less than 50 friends and is not viewable publicly, where I post pictures, ask friends for advice, etc.; and one account with several hundreds of friends that I use as a "public" account. I also have a third account, that I don't really use, as I work a lot with kids and teenagers, and they tend to want to add me— this account is solely for that purpose).
  • danso 14y ago
    I completely agree...I've "quit" Facebook by changing my password to some pasted value that I can't memorize. I have FB email me if someone direct messages me...so if I really need to tell someone something, I can...but the hassle of logging in is great enough that I do it only when necessary. And for times in my life when I feel like using FB more, I can switch the password (or use a cookie) The all-or-nothing mindset is silly
  • smokeyj 14y ago
    Careful not to get banned for multiple accounts.
  • verticalflight 14y ago
    3 accounts doesn't sound like "balanced" usage.
• digitalsushi 14y ago
  I ditched facebook about 2 years ago, for 14 months. I learned that I never made enough of an impression for any of my friends to inquire where I was. It was incredibly depressing because I exposed a lie to myself, that I had close friends. I guess it's been neat, knowing the truth, but it was an expensive trade to obtain it. I've been back on there for a few months again, and sadly, even knowing none of those people actually think about me in their daily lives, it's once again a fantastic placebo. So if you're sensitive and there's a chance your friends aren't really as close as you think, you should pause before you test every single one of them at the same time.
  • stdbrouw 14y ago
    > I learned that I never made enough of an impression for any of my friends to inquire where I was. Well, did you ever inquire where they were?
  • ams6110 14y ago
    If your main interaction with a person is via facebook, they are not a close friend.
    • Karunamon 14y ago
      That's a heck of a generalization.
      • khyryk 14y ago
        It can still be a more-true-than-false generalization. Most of what we can claim is limited to generalizing.
        • Karunamon 14y ago
          It's that generalization i take issue with. The communication medium you use to talk with your friends doesn't have all that much correlation between how close of friends you are. Distance, time, and other concerns would rank much more highly than facebook vs something else.
• Swizec 14y ago
  I don't understand this at all. FB (and social media in general) is the only thing I've found that enables me to organize going out for drinks with more than 2 people at once. Also the only thing that lets me post "Hey, anyone wanna go out for ice cream tomorrow evening?" and actually having 5 people come. Three of which are completely new outside twitter/facebook. It's really quite awesome. Hell, I have very scatterbrained friends who are always busy with something. Without twitter, facebook and irc I'd never get to talk to them at all. Let alone be able to see them almost every other day like I do now. And that's not even accounting for the fact that some of us tend to leave the country for months at a time, but still wanting to keep in touch. Seriously though, how do you usefully and efficiently keep in touch with more than 1 person via telephone? I can't even imagine it working. Oh and, word of advice from a "silly 24 year old". If looking at other people's lives makes you depressed, lead an awesomer life. Friends being better than you should be an encouragement to do better, not a depressor.
  • ams6110 14y ago
    For some reason as I read this I thought of the thread from a few days ago, about how if you freelance, you shouldn't take on low-value, high-demand clients. Maybe if your "friends" only get together or even talk to you in response to tweets or facebook, and forget all about you otherwise, you need to consider their real commitment to the friendship. You know that friends did manage to organize cocktail parties at each other's houses, gather at restaurants, etc. before twitter or facebook existed.
    • Swizec 14y ago
      Who said they forget all about me? It's just the most convenient way to contact me. They use twitter/facebook/irc to ask me out for stuff as well ...
  • pacemkr 14y ago
    I use email just fine for this...
  • graue 14y ago
    When I signed up for Facebook, that was my dream. That I would post stuff like "who wants to get ice cream tomorrow night?" and, just like that, people would take me up on it. Never happened. On the contrary, people I met would "friend" me, but still keep me out of their real-world cliques. Example: A guy invited everyone to a party at his house. Everyone else who responded knew where he lived. I sent a message asking. He ignored me. I had an experience like the GP's. Facebook was an opiate, making me think I was keeping up with friends, when it was really pointless chatter. After I quit, I emailed an overseas friend and we had a far more meaningful exchange than anything during the year we were connected on Facebook. I guess it depends who you know. Most of my close, in-town friends use FB minimally or not at all. So they weren't the same people I was talking to on FB.
• T-hawk 14y ago
  > I would sit there staring at how awesome people's lives were and wonder why I wasn't doing such awesome things myself. I felt this way with Facebook, but then worked out what was going on. It's a multiple-endpoints situation. The status updates you read aren't coming from a random distribution of your friends. They come from a self-selected population that is doing something interesting at that particular time. People (mostly) don't post status updates about an average workday or lazy weekend. If you have 52 friends, who each go on vacation one week out of the year, then every week Facebook will be showing you somebody's awesome vacation updates. That doesn't mean that your own life is worse or less interesting for not being on vacation that particular week.
• mitjak 14y ago
  This is amazing. I was just discussing this with a friend, and quitting Facebook was one of the first things we considered. Interesting coincidence.